


Four Hundred Years

by Somedeepmystery



Category: PotC
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-01
Updated: 2007-06-01
Packaged: 2017-11-02 23:37:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/374633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Somedeepmystery/pseuds/Somedeepmystery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He always knows when it happens. The air, the very sea itself, smell and taste different when her soul is in the world." <b>*SPOILERS!* AWE</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	Four Hundred Years

**Author's Note:**

> I've never had a beta for my PotC stuffs so feel free to point out any glaring errors.

 

He always knows when it happens. The air, the very sea itself, smell and taste different when her soul is in the world. He can always find her too. He can feel her, somewhere deep in the empty cavern of his chest. Not in his heart. His heart is with his Elizabeth, buried with her. It always belonged to her after all and without her, he really didn’t have need of it. Still, there is something there that calls to him.

It doesn’t surprise him that she always ends up near the sea, her soul is drawn to it and, he likes to think, to him. After all they are, in many ways, one and the same. He and she are one.

He walks up out of the water, feeling the rush of it over his body and a teasing of the rivulets that run off him as he emerges from the depths. He’s not surprised that there are people on the beach, there’s rarely a beach these days without people on it, though the sparseness of the clothing never ceases to surprise him, and he raises an eye brow as some woman walks by him topless and wearing what he has learned is called a “thong”. They don’t seem to even notice the spectacle he is in his billowing sleeves and dark breeches.

The first thing he does is take off his boots. For all that he is the sea; he misses the feel of sand between his toes.

He’s hasn’t been asleep for the last 400 years, he may be permanently lost at sea, but he’s never lost his curiosity. Most of his crew now are more of this age than his own. He always inquires of them information of life. Language is also never a problem, he speaks them all. Whether this is a gift that comes with the curse or learned over years of ferrying multifarious souls safely to their finale destination, he can’t remember.

In any case, he knows what to do.

He finds a shop that buys antiques or coins, this particular day it is coins, and when he shows what he has to offer the little man behind the counter nearly faints with excitement. He laughs, unable not to.

“S’ppose you got this plundering some hapless ship?” the clerk says jokingly in reference to his dress.

“Me? Never,” he responds with a smile, and receives one in return. They never really ask about it. People who bring in very valuable treasures are allowed to be eccentric.

He takes the money and tucks it away before heading to the nearest clothing merchant. He looks around at the people walking by; he looks for what another man is buying. They are in the tropics this time, and he ends up in a pair of light linen ‘pants’ (such a strange word) and shirt. His own clothes he stuffs into a bag that he can carry over his shoulder. His sword isn’t a problem, he didn’t bring it. He’s immortal after all and has other ways of defending himself if necessary.

Ten years ago when he'd seen her, she’d been about ten years old kicking a ball around in a field. So this time she should be around twenty. He walks through the tourist crowded streets following that feeling in his chest, scanning the faces in the crowd for hers.

He finds her in the market picking over fresh fruit and he smiles broadly at the sight of her. She is wearing a long tunic in peacock blue, and a pair of white shorts. He doesn’t mind enjoying the view of her legs, which go on forever, and even in the presence of all the scantily clad women, she’s the only one who brings forth a response in him.

In four hundred years he’s seen a lot of women, yet her affect on him remains the same.

Her hair is cut short and boyish, streaked from the sun. He imagines his Elizabeth would like that hair, the ease of care, the lack of fuss. He would’ve missed her long tresses of course, but his first priority had always been to make her happy.

He makes his way in her direction, pretending to look over the fruits there. He doesn’t really need food, but sometimes he likes to taste it just the same. He picks up a mango and looks it over. He conveniently reaches for the same fruit she does, and their hands make contact. To him it’s like a blow to the gut, but in a really good way. She pulls back her hand and laughs.

“Sorry,” she says and her voice is like the sweetest music ever played. “You go ahead.”

“No, please,” he responds smiling at her. “Ladies first.”

She dances about a bit, turning her mouth in that way he knows so well, she looks sideways at the fruit in question. “Alright, I will,” she says and snatches it up, holding it to her chest as she smiles at him coyly.

“Now, perhaps you could point out a suitable replacement. That one did look to be the very best, but I’ll settle for any other one that you choose.”

She grins mischievously and hands him one with several scars and a bit of bruising. He looks down at it and raises his eyebrows, before his lips quirk to the side in a wry smile. She laughs, and takes it back replacing it with another one that is lovely and ripe. He smiles again.

Four hundred years, and several incarnations, and she hadn’t really changed.

“You know,” she says as they wait to pay the vendor. “You look familiar to me.”

He looks at her for a moment, pretending to think about it, “You know, I was just thinking that very thing? Have we met somewhere before perhaps?”

“I don’t know, have you ever been to Portland? Oregon. In the US?”

“Aye,” he says slipping for a moment in his speech, “Once, a very long time ago.”

She looks at him curiously for a moment, then she’s smiling again, “Then maybe we have.”

She pays for her fruit and then turns to him as he steps up to the merchant. “Well, it was nice shopping with you.” She seems just a tad reluctant to leave, and he seizes the opportunity.

“I don’t suppose you’d do a favor for a possible friend from your past?”

She smirks playfully and it’s beautiful. “Perhaps we were enemies?”

“Not possible,” he says handing a bill to the vendor and murmuring for him to keep the change. “Would an enemy give up the best mango for you?”

“Hmm, I suppose he wouldn’t. So what is this favor?”

“Breakfast,” he replies and she looks at him with interest. “I love mangoes of course but I think I would like something a bit more substantial. Where is a good place to have a bite?”

“Well, I could show you my favorite place, but I’m afraid then you might stalk me,” she says playfully.

“If that is your worry, I can promise you’ll never see me again after this day.” She looks a bit disappointed at this, but answers, “Very well then,” and she nods her head for him to follow.

“My name is Will, by the way.” He never lies about that, if only to hear his name on her lips.

“It’s nice to meet you, Will,” she says turning to him. The wind tousles her short hair and a lock of it strays into her eyes. She pushes it back with long, tanned fingers. “I’m Nora.”

“Hello, Nora, it’s a pleasure to meet you as well.”

“Part of the fun of traveling, maybe my favorite. Meeting new people.”

“I have to agree; new people can make things interesting. But old acquaintances have their place as well.”

“True,” she says. She slows and points to a little hole in the wall restaurant and they go inside. For a moment it is dark, but his eyes adjust quickly – night blindness is of little use in his line of work - and in an instant the dark interior is as light as the day to him.

It’s not the same for her and he feels her hand on his arm as she steadies herself.

“I see a table near the aft… back… windows. I… don’t suppose you’d be willing to join me?”

She’s smiling again and he can’t get enough. “Come to think of it, I am a bit hungry. I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to have breakfast with a “possible friend from my past.”

They walk together through the bustling restaurant and take a seat in a booth near the large windows that look out over the sea. He gazes out at it for a moment, feels the tug of it, but it is nothing like the pull she has on him. Even in Nora’s skin.

They find an ease as they talk. He understands it, but he can see that she doesn’t, even as she embraces it. She tells him of her life, her loves, her passions. She tells him how she loves the sea and that she drove her parents crazy with her obsession. She tells him that as a little girl she was determined to be a pirate. “I was so disappointed when I found out there were no more.”

“Oh, they’re still out there,” he says, “But no more large ships with wind in their sails and cannons on the bow. No, they are strange motorized things. Really takes the romance out of it if you ask me.”

She agrees and asks him what he does. On this of course he has to lie. He can’t very well say that he captains the Flying Dutchman, ship of the dead, ferrying souls on to their eternal resting place. But he’s smart enough to stick to the two things he knows: ships and metal working. The later is dimmest in his memory, and he’s sure that methods have changed over the years, but he remembers the heat, the ring of hammer against red hot steel sending vibrations running up his arm and through his body as he beat it to his will.

This time he goes with ships, it will cover his slip earlier. “Cargo,” he says sticking as close to the truth as he can. “I specialize in precious cargo. I’m responsible for getting it safely from where it is, to where it needs to be.”

Her eyes light up at the thought of being at sea, and they speak for hours about sailing and the sea and the feel of the wind in your hair and of salt on your skin. They stay so long that the waitress asks if they want to have lunch. Their breakfast plates have long been taken away, and he can’t remember what he has eaten, he only remembers her.

She laughs and pulls him from the table. “C’mon sailor, see the sights with me,” and he is thrilled, it doesn’t always go so well, often he only manages to speak a few lines with her, exchange the pleasantries. This time, miraculously, he gets the whole day.

They see almost everything, and she is still ready for more when he starts to feel that warning. It crawls up under his skin like heat and ice at the same time. He only has a few more hours.

“I’ll need to be getting back soon. I need to be gone before sunset.”

“Oh,” she says disappointedly, “I was hoping you’d join me for dinner, we’ve already had breakfast and lunch after all.” She pauses for a long moment looking off into the distance. He just looks at her, beyond worrying about appearances; he only has a few more hours to look upon her face.

For a moment he remembers, decades ago, too many to count. She’d been shipwrecked and he’d come to do his duty. He hadn’t taken her though, he couldn’t; instead he’d conjured up a small boat from the depths and placed her in it. He’d drawn salt from the water and left it for her. He’d bent the rules to give her a chance. He’d known she’d made it, because he hadn’t been called back.

This present woman was looking back at him intently now, and he could see she was searching for something, something she needed from him. He didn’t know what it was, but he left himself open to her gaze. He let her see the harshness, the pain, the deep lonesomeness, and most of all he let her see the love. The love he still felt even without his heart in his possession.

She moves closer to him and he doesn’t back away, letting the scent of her wash over him. There are different tones to Nora’s scent but underneath the aroma of the present and the added touch of things much different, it’s the scent of Elizabeth that underscores it all and he breathes her in. She touches his face. She’s been touching him all day, but it never wanes in it’s affect on him. He places a hand on her waist and she moves in even closer. She leans up and kisses him, taking him by surprise. Her lips are soft and warm and determined as they move over his. It’s like lightening coursing through him and he can’t resist opening beneath her determined mouth. He didn’t expect this, couldn’t have hoped for it, but he can’t deny it, after all, as much as she belongs to him he belongs even more so to her.

She takes him back to her room, and he is stuck for a moment in old proprieties but again he can’t deny her. Her hands slide inside his shirt, caressing his skin, fingertips flitting over the scars on his chest, and that alone is almost too much for him. He finds that he’s as nervous as he had been his first time, unsure and uncertain of how things should go. She is definitely surprised at his confused reaction to the condom, but he covers slightly by saying he was just a bit too caught up in her eyes. He thinks he should have queried his newest crewmen on the subject of sex, but then she is naked and pulling him to her and he doesn’t think about anything but her after that.

All too soon he is dressing by the window, looking out at the sun low in the sky, too low. He could be on the Dutchman in an instant, but he doesn’t want to disappear right in front of her. That might be more than she’d be willing to deal with. He has just slipped on his shirt when he hears her voice.

“You didn’t mean it did you?” she asks, and he looks at her questioningly. “When you said I wouldn’t see you again after today?” He stops, realizing what it will mean to her, how it will seem when he disappears into the night and is never seen again.

“I did, I’m afraid. I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting this, I…”

“No, it’s alright, I just hoped…”

“Well, hope is a powerful thing.” He stops and thinks a moment. It’s difficult because the sunset is pulling hard at him now. “Perhaps, someday we will see each other again.”

“I really hope we will,” she says. She’s still naked, tangled in sheets, her short hair in disarray. He remembers running his fingers through it. Perhaps there was something to this short hair idea.

“I have to leave now. My ship will weigh anchor at sunset.”

“So, this is good bye then.”

He nods in response.

They don’t say anything else, there is nothing really to say and he knows he can’t resist his curse. He steps out the door and closes it tightly behind him.

He doesn’t see her as she suddenly leaps from the bed, wrapping the sheets tightly around her, and runs for the door. She throws it open, his name on her lips, and looks out into the gold tinted landscape.

She sees no one. The stairs are void of footsteps and there’s no figure on the sidewalk to contribute to her hope of him. She visibly deflates, and holding tightly with one hand to the sheet that covers her, she steps back and uses the other to close the door.

 

He can hear the hiss of the sun as it touches the horizon. His father is at the helm and gives him a slight smile as he arrives. He has tried many times to get Bootstrap to let go, move on to the after life, but the old man insists that eternity is the least he owes his son.

They exchange no words as Will takes the wheel; both know there aren’t any.

He calls out the orders that will return them all to their proper place, hearing it echoed through the crew. He already hears the call of his duty and he will answer it. After all, even after four hundred years, he doesn’t think he’d like tentacles, even if it would be something different.

~


End file.
